Sardis Bath complex

In the 7th and 6th century BC a Lydian road was found at two metres below the Roman road. The consecutive roads span 2500 years, only in 1950 the road was shifted slightly to the South. The Roman road was twice as wide as the present road, it was 18,5 metres wide, paved with marble blocks and had covered portico’s at the flanks, with mosaics on their floors. The Roman pavement visible now dates from the 4th-6th centuries AD.

The gymnasium-bath house complex, visible across the orad, covered 23.000 square metres. It’s built in the “Imperial Style”, implying that it is symmetrical along one axis, with at one end a central hot house (caldarium). It is supposed to have been completed in the middle of the second century AD . It has been repaired and modified through the following centuries, until it was abandoned following the Sassanid invasion in 616.